Request: Psytrance noob tips for traktor manipulation
Hey - ya!
I’m seeing the psy-people rising from the underground lately, so I wish to ask:
What Traktor 1.2 effects do you like to use at your gigs?
Do you use smart knobs with chained effects? Examples?
Since I’m using the new Oxygen mapping, do you use slice often? Should I remap this effect to something better? I alredy have Delay, Filter and Beatmasher mapped.
Do you copy the decks to apply a effect to the highs or lows only? How can i do that without mess with the volume and equalization of the mix?
Hey dude. Well i cant speak for the others but with psytrance i try to go easy on the effects, mostly i just use looping, a bit of filter, phaser and delay. I like to let the tracks speak for themselves with this genre as it is my love and don’t want to make an awesome track sound bad! I think less is more with this style buddy I like the new effects in 1.2 but i need to experiment with them a bit more before i use them while playing.
I’m with Jester on this one… I don’t like to mess with the artists original intention of the song too much… I do long layered mixes, a bit of looping. Only effect I really use a lot is the echo on my djm800. I might start looking at some of the traktor fx once I get a new laptop w/ a bit more horsepower.
With Psy I’ve been really minimal in my effects. I have an advanced chain of Iceverb/LoFi/Reverse Grain that gives a really interesting feel on buildups, which is where I do a LOT of my mixing in Psy.
I also have a beatmasher/beatslicer/delay t3 advanced chain that is really good for breakbeats.
I also use a gater, beatmasher and delay in advanced mode to taste for different things. The gater I might get rid of for something else. These are all tied to superknobs
I use very little on the iceverb, too much and it just gets overwhelming, especially for the sounds in Psytrance, at least to me. But combining it with the LoFi gives it a really interesting tension. The reverse grain is just what it all builds up to and as the tension builds the sounds get all weird, and then BAM! melody
Great answers! Thank you so much! You are the most generous people for share your knowlage with me!
I’ll try these at home latter.
I’m thinking about select some tracks with the effects that I liked most and try to learn how to do it on the fly at traktor.
I like especially the effects that introduce some variation at the bassline, some tracks are boring because they seems to have the same bassline all the time. I like the “up-down” effect that bizarre contact uses a lot in their music.
I like the mashers too, but only with the kick separeted from the rest.
A question remains, when you guys talk about layers I imagine that you do a preparation of the music layering it before your gigs and then playing it with 2 or 3 decks, is that right?
I was doing something different, deck coping the track and cuting hi from deck A and cuting mid-low from deck B, but like that the music sounds strange, like there is a bad equalization set to the mix
What should I learn-read to know how to do it better?
When I layer tracks…i mean that i play Deck A (Dominant) and then have Deck B playing over it.
You can;t keep it in the WHOLE time, but when you are layering them like this, you can swap over the bass and back again…you can beatmash the track on Deck B and get a breakbeat kinda effect on its hats…and then you vary it by turning it up little and back.
But when you have the two decks playing the same time with all 3 (low-mid-hi) ON at the two decks the volume level rises too much too me, I have to cut some to keep the same volume level. I’m sure that is another way for do it, I just can’t realise what is.
Well, as I say at topic, it’s noob tips, and I’m still a noob wanting to evolve to a DJ.
Don’t blame for ask those simple questions, but when I’m into something, I’m really into it. I want to know all of it and I’ll keep asking questions until I have some material to train at home and since I’m learning on my own, i need some rule models to inspire me hehe
I luv mixing psytrance, with all the wacky sounds it lends itself soo well to doing all sorts of crazy off the wall stuff with layers, effects and just plain zany techniques that you wouldnt dare do with any other genre of music because the sounds you make are just too wacked out for any other genre of music.
I hear lots of people say that you cant do much with psytrance but personally i don’t see where they are coming from - i find its much easier to do crazy layers and stuff with Psy than it is to mix drum and bass.
While i wouldn’t say drum and bass (which i predominantly mix) is the easiest genre to mix, it certainly doesn’t lend itself as well as to doing zaney stuff as well as Psy does. But i would defiantly say Psy is easier to do traditional mixing than dnb - if that makes any sense
See, Sarasin and I kindly disagree on this. I will gladly cut out more than 2/3’s of a song, and screw around with individual parts if it fits my fancy. I think we all should. The music was written to be listened to a certain way, definitely doesn’t mean it was written to be played/danced to in a specific and static way.
And besides, it’s more fun to use controls for more control.
We were talking about different tecniques: you about mixing two different tracks and me about Deck-coping the same track to Deck B to apply some effects only at the hats at B (by cuting mid-low at B) or only at the kicks at A (by cuting hi on A).
I think I need to practice my english a bit more hehe.
I like the new effects in 1.2 but i need to experiment with them a bit more before i use them while playing.
